Wordless Picture Book Research Articles

Coming Home by Greg Ruth (review)

Reviewed by: Coming Home by Greg Ruth Elizabeth Bush Ruth, Greg Coming Home; written and illus. by Greg Ruth. Feiwel, 2014 30p ISBN 978-1-250-05547-7 $16.99 R* 4–7 yrs Who is a stranger to the experience of awaiting the arrival of an absent loved one? The preschooler wonders how long it will be until Dad gets to the daycare center for pick-up; the parent counts down the hours until her teen gets home from prom safe and sound; the nursing home resident watches for his weekly visitor—all sharing the same bright anticipation, tinged with a shadow of anxiety. Separation issues seem to be part and parcel of the human condition, but how much more poignant must they be for children of parents on military deployment? In this nearly wordless picture book, Ruth invites viewers to join a young boy at the airport as he crosses the tarmac for the first sight and first touch of his own returning soldier. The genius of this presentation lies in Ruth’s masterful manipulation of time and perspective. The action transpires in something close to real time; indeed, careful perusal of the pictures and speculation about the boy’s state of mind can bring the pacing into near alignment with the minutes (or could it be mere seconds?) between his opening glance across the velvet rope barrier, his race across the tarmac, and the moment of reunion. Although, technically, viewers watch the boy’s movements, they also concurrently adopt his precise point of view thanks to a clever pictorial strategy. As the boy scans the arrivals and their families, steadily quickening his pace, each pair or group he notices and then promptly dismisses is brought to the foreground in full color, while the rest of the crowd retreats into a roughly sketched gray background. Thus Ruth stages the complete scene while allowing audiences to move freely within it as detached observer and invested participant. We recognize the joy of each reunion, but it never become the boy’s—or our—emotional concern. We haven’t found the right soldier yet. With such emotionally fraught subject matter, it’s imperative to dance along an extremely fine line, avoiding maudlin manipulation while conveying legitimate sentiment, and Ruth carefully crafts his narrative to keep in balance. Not a single word or phrase pushes an emotional agenda (“Waiting”; “Watching”; “Where is . . . ?”); Ruth never ascribes “correct” feelings but allows the audience to attribute or experience their own. He also deftly incorporates touches of humor to relieve the tension: true to young guy perspective, the boy can’t help but cast a sideways glance—accompanied by a summary “Sheesh!”—at a smooching couple. There’s also an inventive touch of misdirection: if the cover art and the opening scene seem to promise a shopworn tale of a boy and his dog, audiences are in for a surprise when the dog promptly takes off, leash flying in its wake, straight into the arms of a camo-clad woman. It’s the boy’s—and our—first disappointment (“Lucky dog”). [End Page 245] It’s also now clear that, since the dog belongs to the woman holding his leash, she must not be the boy’s mother. So, who is he with? Who is he expecting? The penultimate spread, a jubilant shout of “MOM!”, solves the mystery. It also may, and therefore should, cause viewers a brief moment of embarrassment if they fell right into the trap of assuming the boy is expecting a father’s return, especially since Ruth had already given a visual nod to soldiers of both genders and families of various configurations. Ruth remarks in a closing note, “No soldier goes to war alone—he or she always brings along their family and friends with them.” Teachers, librarians, and families selecting books that introduce military service to a very young audience will do well to include this tribute to military families, whose profound experiences are often acknowledged only in tragic stories of bereavement or in joyful but fleeting photo ops. (See p. 276 for publication information.) Click for larger view View full resolution Copyright © 2015 The Board of Trustees of the...

Fathers' language input during shared book activities: Links to children's kindergarten achievement

The present study used data from the Family Life Project (FLP) to examine predictive relations between fathers' and mothers' language input during a wordless picture book task in the home just before kindergarten entry and children's letter–word identification, picture vocabulary, and applied problems scores at the end of kindergarten. Fathers' and mothers' language input was defined as the number of different words and mean length of utterance and was measured using Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts (SALT). Hierarchical regression analyses with demographic controls revealed that mothers' mean length of utterance predicted children's applied problems scores. More importantly, fathers' mean length of utterance predicted children's vocabulary and applied problems scores above and beyond mothers' language. Findings highlight the unique contribution of fathers to children's early academic achievement. Implications for future research, practice, and policy are discussed.

The Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule and narrative assessment: Evidence for specific narrative impairments in autism spectrum disorders

Purpose: The Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS) contains a narrative generation task in which clients tell a story from a wordless picture book; however, the resulting narrative is not usually examined for its linguistic properties. This study aimed to examine narrative generation in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) by comparing narratives elicited from children with ASD during the ADOS to those produced by language-matched typically-developing (TD) peers.Method: Participants were children with ASD (n = 11) and TD controls (n = 17). Both groups were aged 9–15 years and were matched for expressive and receptive language skills and non-verbal intelligence. Narratives were analysed for local structure elements (length, fluency, errors, semantics and syntax), cohesion and global elements (story grammar and internal state language).Result: Results indicated that the narratives of the children with ASD were syntactically less complex, contained more ambiguous pronouns and included fewer story grammar elements than their control counterparts; with further analysis showing differences between younger and older children.Conclusion: The present findings provide evidence that children with ASD exhibit subtle story generation impairments and provide preliminary support for the inclusion of narratives elicited as part of the ADOS in the assessment of specific language skills in this population.

Flashlight by Lizi Boyd (review)

Reviewed by: Flashlight by Lizi Boyd Jeannette Hulick Boyd, Lizi Flashlight; written and illus. by Lizi Boyd. Chronicle, 2014 34p ISBN 978-1-4521-1894-9 $15.99 Ad 3-5 yrs In this wordless picture book, a child camping at night in a forest uses a flashlight to explore the flora and fauna of the area; when he trips over a rock and drops the flashlight, the animals take their turn with the light, highlighting various parts of [End Page 146] the child and eventually helping him find his way to his tent. Trees, plants, animals, the tent, and the child are outlined and detailed in a uniform light gray against the black backgrounds; more luminous plants and animals (birch trees, firefly wings) and the full moon are rendered in white while small details such as leaves and a luna moth are colored in soft tones. Within the light’s triangular beam, patches of landscape and various animals also appear in color. There really isn’t much of a story here, and the spreads sometimes suffer from inconsistency, especially in the coloring of elements in shadow. There’s a childlike charm to Boyd’s delicately detailed gouache paintings (printed on matte paper), though, and the game of following the flashlight and picking out the various animals as they move around from page to page (sometimes appearing in the light and sometimes in the dark) is an engaging activity for kids. Readers who are captivated by a flashlight’s power but who are not quite ready for Snicket and Klassen’s spectacular The Dark (BCCB 6/13) may find this a thought-provoking introduction to the light and shadows, and it would be a natural choice for a bedtime story hour or a handy precursor to a nighttime walk. Copyright © 2014 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Wordless book-sharing styles in bilingual preschool classrooms and Latino children’s emergent literacy skills

The current study explored the preschool classroom environment as an important context for supporting dual-language learning Latino children’s development of emergent literacy skills. The results of the study showed that teachers in Spanish–English bilingual preschool classrooms varied in the way they shared wordless picture books with the children, with analyses yielding three distinct narrative styles: didactic constructors, didactic providers and conversational sharers. These styles were differentiated in the manner in which teachers engaged the preschoolers in book-sharing interactions. Children whose teachers adopted a didactic constructor style (i.e. teachers elicited most of the narrative information from the children) seemed to have the best outcomes at the end of the preschool year, in terms of their print-related, language and storytelling skills. In addition, teachers’ use of cognitively challenging talk was related to Latino preschoolers’ language and storytelling skills, especially for the youngest children. Results are discussed in relation to the importance of preschool in supporting low-income Latino children’s emergent literacy development.

Quest by Aaron Becker (review)

Reviewed by: Quest by Aaron Becker Deborah Stevenson Becker, Aaron Quest; illus. by Aaron Becker. Candlewick, 2014 [40p] (The Journey Trilogy) ISBN 978-0-7636-6595-1 $15.99 Reviewed from galleys R 5-9 yrs In this second volume in the planned trilogy beginning with Journey (BCCB 10/13), the boy and girl who met in that first wordless picture book are now off on a fantastical adventure together. It begins when they encounter an imprisoned king, who before he’s snatched back by guards manages to hand them a map and his orange marker, a mate to the magical red and purple markers the kids use to draw things into life. The map sends the pair to the locations of a yellow, green, and blue (well, teal) marker, requiring them to escape the sacked castle, dive undersea, and climb a mountaintop, all while dodging the pursuing soldiers. When all the markers are obtained, the boy’s purple quetzal flies through the sky with them, creating a rainbow that confounds the aggressors and frees the besieged king and subjects. While the magical drawing isn’t be the revelation here that it was in the previous book, the friends’ adventure is definitely fantasy-worthy. The intricate scenery, which includes an elaborately constructed castle, soldiers’ tiny dirigibles, an undersea civilization, and a flimsy and vertiginous rope bridge, provides a highly satisfactory imagined playground. The watercolors have a slightly smoky haze that adds to the epic quality of the landscape, while the inclusion of the map (a cleverly constituted color-coded infographic) allows kids to puzzle out the quest and match map components to the kids’ stops. While Journey makes a better introduction to the magic, the story here is sufficiently free-standing that audiences can enjoy the quest in its own right. Copyright © 2014 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Exploring Wordless Picture Books

Wordless picturebooks may be better defined by what they do contain – visually rendered narratives – rather than what they do not contain. This column challenges traditional ways of looking at wordless picturebooks and offers a few approaches for integrating wordless picturebooks into a wider range of classrooms, preschool through middle school.

Reading as a language event of the self: In conversation with Bertau, Lipari, and Karsten

This commentary explores selected ideas presented in the special issue on language and the self and considers them in terms of reading. Bertau’s notions of the in-between and sharedness, Lipari’s description of the polychronic, polymodal, and polyphonic qualities of language events, and Karsten’s description of the cross chronotope relationships between self-positions during writing are discussed. Using a case analysis of a young child’s wordless picture book reading, this set of ideas is used to illuminate reading as a dialogic, relational event of the self, one that depends on the use of social imagination as a critical part of the meaning-making process.

Looking at a Wordless Picture Book: Quentin Blake’s Clown

In this study of Quentin Blake’s wordless picture book, Clown, which won the International Bologna Ragazzi Award in 1996, I examine the ways that the layout, color, line, perspective, directional bias and point of view act as subtexts which can influence the ‘reading’ of the pictorial narrative. Besides brief outlines of other wordless picture books and their creators there are references to those literary theorists who have informed my own work. I conclude that the lack of words in Clown is compensated for by the abundance of images, the clown’s expressive body language and the textual quality of the drawing style.

Conversation Currents: Watercolor as a Form of Storytelling: An Interview with Jerry Pinkney

This column features edited selections from a conversation between well-known children’s book creator Jerry Pinkney and Language Arts editor Laura May. Mr. Pinkney’s work presents little-known sides to historical events and provides a level of detail that is unusual for a watercolorist. He discusses his artistic process, his work—including his two recent wordless picturebooks—and his thoughts on guiding children.

Rotraut Susanne Berner: Germany ⋆ Illustrator

Rotraut Susanne BernerGermany ⋆ Illustrator Samantha Christensen Rotraut Susanne Berner was born in Stuttgart, Germany in 1948, and studied graphic design at the Munich University of Applied Sciences in her young adulthood. Since beginning her career as a freelance graphic designer and illustrator in 1977, Berner has become one of the most celebrated and respected children's illustrators in Germany. She has illustrated over eighty children's books, some of which she has written herself, and has designed close to eight hundred book covers. Her main interest lies in wordless picture books, and she accommodates her very young readers by telling captivating and intricate stories through rich, detailed illustrations. Berner's style has become a benchmark among German illustrators, making her a common name in art and illustration circles, and she has set new standards for illustration and design. Her use of various shapes and color allows her to strike a balance between realism and fantasy, solemnity and light-heartedness. Berner has a flair for incorporating multiple perspectives into her work, and creates a visual realm where fish fly, houses float, and size does not matter. Her technique varies between many artistic forms—pen and ink, heavy brushstrokes, thick line work in contrast with rich colour, flast screen printing—and while she does assert herself as somewhat of an artistic chameleon, she maintains a recognizable style that shines through in her work. Her passion for wordless picture books means that she pays close attention to detail, incorporating as much narrative features in her crafted images as possible. Her art primarily tells a story, and grounds her young readers in a world of wonder that is not too removed from their own everyday lives. Since the beginning of her career, Berner's artwork has gained much interest in the way of awards and distinctions. She earned her first award, the Celestino-Piatti Prize for book graphic design, in 1983, and since then has been nominated for many awards. She is active in the children's illustration community, and co-founded the Illustratoren Treffpunkt [Illustrator's Meeting] at the Frankfurt Bookfair in the 1990s. She remains dedicated to children's book illustration, and continues to inspire her young readers with her meticulous and enchanting picture books. Selected Bibliography • Als der Tod zu uns kam [When Death Came to Us]. Text Jürg Schubiger. Wuppertal: Peter Hammer, 2011. Print. Google Scholar • Dunkel war's, der Mond schien helle [It was Dark Outside, the Moon was Bright]. Ed. Edmund Jacoby. Hildesheim: Gerstenberg, 1999. Print. Google Scholar • Frühlings-Wimmelbuch [Spring Wimmel Book]. Hildesheim: Gerstenberg, 2004. Print. Google Scholar • Karlchen-Geschichten [Stories of Little Charly]. Munich: Hanser, 2003. Print. Google Scholar • Die Prinzessin kommt um vier [The Princess Arrives at Four]. Text Wolfdietrich Schnurre. Berlin: Aufbau, 2000. Print. [End Page 25] Google Scholar Copyright © 2014 Bookbird, Inc.

Internal state language in the storybook narratives of children with and without autism spectrum disorder: Investigating relations to theory of mind abilities

The current study examines narratives elicited using a wordless picture book, focusing on language used to describe the characters’ thoughts and emotions (i.e., internal state language, ISL). The sample includes 21 children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and 24 typically developing controls, matched on children's gender, IQ, as well as receptive and expressive vocabulary. This research had three major findings. First, despite equivalent performance on standardized language assessments, the volume of children's narratives (i.e., the number of utterances and words, the range of unique verbs and adjectives) was lower in children with ASD than in typically developing controls. Second, after controlling for narrative volume, the narratives of children with ASD were less likely to reference the characters’ emotions than was the case for typically developing controls. Finally, our results revealed a specific association between children's use of emotion terms and their performance on a battery of experimental tasks evaluating children's Theory of Mind abilities. Implications for our understanding of narrative deficits in ASD as well as interventions that use narrative as a context for improving social comprehension are discussed.

Keeping track of characters: Factors affecting referential adequacy in children’s narratives

This study considered the adequacy of references used by children to introduce, maintain, and reintroduce characters in complex narratives involving multiple characters. Sixty-three English-speaking Canadian children from kindergarten to second grade ( M age 7.0 years) told two multi-episode stories from wordless picture books. Analyses considered differences in referential adequacy both within-children and between grades. There was an unexpectedly large difference in adequacy levels across stories, mostly because of an overuse of pronouns in one story. Maintenance was the easiest referential function, whereas reintroduction proved more difficult than introduction only for the story with consistently lower adequacy levels. Participants across grades were affected by referential function and by story in analogous ways. The kindergartners did nonetheless obtain lower adequacy levels than the two higher grades due to a higher use of pronouns and because they were less able to clearly refer to characters even when they were using the same linguistic forms. Participants in the three grades successfully used a diversity of linguistic forms for their character references across referential functions. Together, these findings have important implications for referential cohesion in young school-aged children. First, they invite caution when drawing conclusions regarding developmental changes based on a single story. Second, they suggest that reintroduction may be particularly sensitive to story features that make referencing more demanding. Finally, they underscore the importance of considering reference within the broader textual context in order to produce a detailed account of referential abilities.

Fostering Inference Generation With Emergent and Novice Readers

AbstractInference generation makes a strong, unique contribution to reading comprehension. Young children engage in many of the same inference generation processes as sophisticated readers. This article discusses instructional practices that can be used in prekindergarten through grade two to help children think beyond the words of the text. Suggestions are made for planning lessons for narratives that incorporate asking powerful questions and think‐alouds. The article provides descriptions of the effective use of teacher read‐alouds, videos, wordless picture books, and shared reading to improve the narrative comprehension of young children. A sample lesson plan series is provided

The use of emotions in narratives in Williams syndrome

Although individuals with Williams syndrome are very sociable, they tend to have limited contact and friendships with peers. In typically developing children the use of positive emotions (e.g., happy) has been argued to be related to peer relationships and popularity. The current study investigated the use and development of emotion words in Williams syndrome using cross-sectional developmental trajectories and examined children's use of different types of emotion words. Nineteen children with Williams syndrome (WS) and 20 typically developing (TD) children matched for chronological age told a story from a wordless picture book. Participants with WS produced a similar number of emotion words compared to the control group and the use of emotion words did not change when plotted against chronological age or vocabulary abilities in either group. However, participants with WS produced more emotion words about sadness. Links between emotion production and friendships as well as future studies are discussed.Learning outcomes: After reading this article, readers will be able to: explain the development of positive and negative emotions in Williams syndrome and recognize that emotion production is atypical in this population.

Picturebooks: Representation and Narration ed. by Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer (review)

Reviewed by: Picturebooks: Representation and Narration ed. by Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer Lesley D. Clement Picturebooks: Representation and Narration edited by Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer. New York: Routledge, 2014. 239 p. ISBN 9780415818018. The goals of Routledge’s Children’s Literature and Culture series, as defined by its founder, Jack Zipes, are “to enhance research in this field and … point to new directions that bring together the best scholarly work throughout the world.” A recent publication in the series, Picturebooks: Representation and Narration, edited by Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer, unequivocally meets these criteria. The twelve articles in this collection exemplify the outstanding achievements of some pioneers and most respected theorists in western Children’s Literature scholarship of the past twenty-five years and articulate the “new directions” they are forging. Some revisit familiar picturebooks; others travel through new terrains; all open promising portals for future exploration. The collection has three theoretical clusters. Part I, comprising five articles, focuses on “Crossing Genre Boundaries: Artists’ Books, Wordless Picturebooks, and Picturebooks for Adults.” “Boundaries” is interpreted variously for explorations of visual and verbal strategies shared by children’s and adult’s literature, text (however limited)-image synergies, and innovative deconstructions of a book. Included are articles by Åse Marie Ommundsen, who traces the origins of a “Nordic phenomenon,” adult picturebooks, from increasingly advanced picturebooks for children, and Emma Bosch, who interrogates the term “wordless” picturebook by investigating texts and peritexts and developing a system of classification to avoid mislabelling. More beneficial is Sandra Beckett’s advice to question “the need to categorize artists’ books or books of any kind.” Renowned for her work on “crossover” literature, Beckett produces a trailblazing discussion of “The Art of Visual Storytelling: Formal Strategies in Wordless Picturebooks” and the influence that the artist’s book has had on the picturebook. Beckett is the only contributor with an extended discussion of a non-western artist, Katsumi Komagata. While others have not considered non-European writer-illustrators, [End Page 167] there is ample opportunity to build on the laid foundations. As Beckett concludes, “[t]hese extraordinary ‘books’ present new structural formats for the book as well as new ways of reading it.” No one knows this better than Carole Scott, whose publications on picturebook aesthetics and communication are mandatory for anyone studying in this area, and whose article in this collection also examines the influence that the artist’s book has had on the picturebook, particularly its materiality. This group of essays is appropriately rounded off by Evelyn Arizpe, whose extensive publications on literacies and reader response are at the core of Children’s Literature scholarship, and who appeals for more interdisciplinary research into “the ways in which illustrators invite readers to make meaning and how readers respond to these invitations.” Arizpe’s appeal segues well to the three articles in Part II, “Change, Emotions, and Hybridity: Characters in Picturebooks.” Nina Christensen’s “‘Thought and dream are heavenly vehicles’: Character, Bildung, and Aesthetics in Stian Hole’s Garmann Trilogy (2006-2010),” also advises against compartmentalization by eradicating boundaries between instruction and delight, education and art, through the concept of bildung, which captures both the characters’ processes of change and the potential transformative effect that the reading experience can trigger. The heart of this book, and the most cogent discussion on the affective nature of text-image interanimation, is Maria Nikolajeva’s “‘The Penguin Looked Sad’: Picturebooks, Empathy and Theory of Mind.” This prolific scholar, pioneer in picturebook theory, takes us into the cognitive sciences, draws on empirical evidence and psychological theories of empathy and mind-reading to reach her conclusion that “it is in the meeting space between words and images that the emotional tension is created. Cognitive criticism makes this space more visible.” What makes Nikolajeva’s recent work so important is its advocacy of the role that picturebooks can play in honing the potential for empathy and mind-reading (versus “identification”) in the youngest readers. The matchstick figure with its hybridity and seeming incompleteness, discussed by Kümmerling-Meibauer and Jörg Meibauer in the next chapter, may not invite mind-reading, but does evoke empathy. They also explore the connection between the matchstick figure and children’s...

Picturebooks: Beyond the Borders of Art, Narrative and Culture ed. by Evelyn Arizpe, Maureen Farrell, and Julie McAdam, and: Reading Visual Narratives: Image Analysis of Children’s Picture Books by Clare Painter, J. R. Martin and Len Unsworth (review)

Reviewed by: Picturebooks: Beyond the Borders of Art, Narrative and Culture ed. by Evelyn Arizpe, Maureen Farrell, and Julie McAdam, and: Reading Visual Narratives: Image Analysis of Children’s Picture Books by Clare Painter, J. R. Martin and Len Unsworth Karen Coats (bio) Picturebooks: Beyond the Borders of Art, Narrative and Culture, edited by Evelyn Arizpe, Maureen Farrell, and Julie McAdam. London: Routledge, 2013. Reading Visual Narratives: Image Analysis of Children’s Picture Books, by Clare Painter, J. R. Martin, and Len Unsworth. Sheffield, UK: Equinox Publishing, 2013. Picture books—books intended for young children which communicate information or tell stories through a series of many pictures combined with relatively slight texts or no texts at all—are unlike any other form of verbal or visual art. Both the pictures and the texts in these books are different from and communicate differently from pictures and texts in other circumstances. (Nodelman vii) With this assertion in his 1988 publication of Words About Pictures, Perry Nodelman began the first and in many respects still standard work of literary criticism aimed at the picture book as a distinctive art form. By that time, the study of children’s literature as something other and more than an educational tool of dubious literary and cultural interest and value had enjoyed just over a decade and a half of institutional recognition (measured by the creation of the Children’s Literature Association and the launch of its journal in 1973). However, there was as yet no analytical framework for considering how picture books actually do their communicative work. The available tools for considering images were based on the aesthetics of gallery art, not the complex and varied interactions of words and pictures deployed in the process of storytelling. Nodelman’s work broke new ground in teaching us how to see the various elements of picture book art and design, and opened a dialogue that has grown in critical sophistication and scope in tandem with the form itself. Since the appearance of Nodelman’s book, the criticism of picture books has both deepened with respect to explorations of what constitutes a picture book—including the very terminology we use to designate the form and its features—and broadened to include insights and critical apparatus adapted from other areas of inquiry, such as cultural geography, cognitive studies, visual literacy, philosophy, and semiotics. This review looks at two books that represent the exciting and dynamic [End Page 305] state of the evolving critical dialogue of picture book research. The first, Picturebooks: Beyond the Borders of Art, Narrative and Culture, is part of a Routledge series of edited collections of essays that include New Directions in Picturebook Research (2012) and Picturebooks: Representation and Narration (2013). The essays and articles in these books originated from conference papers; the ones in the collection under review were presented at a 2009 conference at the University of Glasgow, Beyond Borders: Art, Narrative and Culture in Picturebooks, the second in an ongoing biannual series entitled New Impulses in Picturebook Research. Subsequent conferences have been held in Turbingen in 2011, and Stockholm in 2013, with edited collections forthcoming from those conferences as well.1 The present collection also includes two papers from the early stages of a separate but related international research project, Visual Journeys, which aims to study immigrant and nonimmigrant children’s responses to wordless picture books; the book from that project, Visual Journeys through Wordless Narratives: An international inquiry with immigrant children and The Arrival, will be published in 2014 by Bloomsbury Academic. The three editors, Evelyn Arizpe, Maureen Farrell, and Julie McAdam, all of the University of Glasgow, form part of the Visual Journeys research team, which also includes partners from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, the Australian Catholic University, and the University of Texas at Austin. The articles in this collection first appeared in a special issue of the New Review of Children’s Literature and Librarianship; that Routledge considered it a profitable venture to reprint them in book form testifies in a material way to the status of and demand for this type of research, as does the conference series itself. Unfortunately, the production quality of the book is variable...

The effect of two different visual presentation modalities on the narratives of mainstream grade 3 children

This study investigated whether a dynamic visual presentation method (a soundless animated video presentation) would elicit better narratives than a static visual presentation method (a wordless picture book). Twenty mainstream grade 3 children were randomly assigned to two groups and assessed with one of the visual presentation methods. Narrative performance was measured in terms of micro- and macrostructure variables. Microstructure variables included productivity (total number of words, total number of T-units), syntactic complexity (mean length of T-unit) and lexical diversity measures (number of different words). Macrostructure variables included episodic structure in terms of goal-attempt-outcome (GAO) sequences. Both visual presentation modalities elicited narratives of similar quantity and quality in terms of the micro- and macrostructure variables that were investigated. Animation of picture stimuli did not elicit better narratives than static picture stimuli.

Young children's metacognition in the context of telling a written story

This study examines young children's metacognition in the context of telling a written story. The participants were 36 children: 12 preschoolers, 12 kindergarteners, and 12 first graders in a kindergarten and a nearby elementary school in a northwestern city in Taiwan. Each child was asked to ‘read’ a 13-page wordless picture book and tell a story that will be transcribed for others to read. Once each child finished telling the story, the scribe asked whether the child wished to revise it; the children's revisions were taken as indicative of metacognitive abilities. Results indicate that 33 out of 36 children demonstrated metacognition as they revised their stories. A significant difference with regards to the accuracy of the revisions was found among the three groups of children, with first graders producing significantly more accurate revisions than did the preschoolers. The implications for future research and practices for teachers are discussed.

El desarrollo del lenguaje evaluativo en narraciones de niños mexicanos de 3 a 12 años

Se reporta el desarrollo de la evaluación en narraciones orales de 40 niños mexicanos de 3 a 12 años. Se obtuvieron siete narraciones por sujeto a partir de láminas seleccionadas de libros sin texto. Se definió la evaluación narrativa como la expresión de la postura del narrador a partir de comentarios sobre los sucesos y los personajes, y de la expresión de las emociones de los personajes de la historia. Se construyeron categorías evaluativas tomando en cuenta estudios sobre evaluación en la narración y los propios datos. Los resultados muestran que la cantidad de evaluaciones ofrecidas y su nivel de elaboración discursiva varían en el rango de edad estudiado.